Please have popups available, for the story makes use of them.
Varykino was warmer than usual, the windows letting sunlight stream through to make his wife glow, while she stood by it, brushing her hair and looking out. Anakin lay peacefully on the bed, holding their child that they had been so excited for. She turned to him, smiling, a smile that had never failed to take his breath away with how much love it filled him with, and he knew that this moment was all he would want for the rest of his life, the only thing improving it would be if she returned to his arms, to their family's bed.
"Come back to me my love," said Anakin. "We miss your warmth."
"We?" asked Padmé, backing up from him, her hands going to her neck, her stomach swelling, and her expression shifting to one of fear. "You killed us Ani. We're dead. There's no we for you anymore."
Anakin looked down to the baby in his arms to see that it had gone cold, its gender unknown because they had never been born, cut off from any life that they could have lived. "No."
Padmé just cried, a devastating look in her eyes as she said, "Anakin. You're breaking my heart."
"I'm sorry Angel, I couldn't lose you," said Anakin, tears flooding his eyes as Varykino grew cold, the windows frosting over with snowflakes tiny enough to look like grains of sand.
"But you did Vader."
"No," choked out Vader, his legs disappearing out from under him, while he crawled towards her."
Padmé said nothing as she collapsed to the floor. Vader continued to choke out denials as he crawled towards her on his forearms, lava licking at the stumps of his legs, the ice burning his metal arm. As he crawled towards her, he heard a voice say something that he had spent his teenage years longing to hear and feeling like a failure for not hearing.
"You were my brother Anakin! I loved you!"
Vader gasped awake, literally, as his breathing apparatus suffered a brief malfunction. He felt the tears wet his cheeks, and knew that for all his Master evangelized about the power of suffering, grief was the wrong kind. He was almost glad for his dreams, for they gave him the chance to grieve. His armor was donned with the help of droids, and he prepared for the day of yet more warfare ahead of him. He could barely remember if the lenses of his suit bathed everything in a shade of blood, or if he had truly never known anything else.
He made his way out of his officers quarters, far less comfortable than any of the other quarters upon the ship, and started to make his way towards the bridge. As he exited the area of the space station where the officers quarters were located, he sensed the newly appointed Grand Moff Tarkin just about to make his own way to the bridge. Tarkin hadn't been his favourite person during the clone wars, was not his favourite person now, but they had known each other for ten years. His Master liked Tarkin, had invented the position of Grand Moff just to give Tarkin more power, would maybe like it if two of his favoured subordinates became friends. Vader considered falling into step with him, and attempting to make conversation the way that he had done with others back during the Clone Wars, maybe congratulate him on his new position in the way that normal people did.
Vader's Master, for all that he liked individual people, did not enjoy when they liked each other more than him, especially if one of those people were Vader. Vader was his Master's only family left, really, and Vader did not want to risk his Master's jealousy over something as petty as loneliness, something he had lived with his whole life, when Palpatine wasn't there. Vader walked just a touch faster, so he would be ahead of Tarkin by enough that there would be no obligation to make conversation for the other man.
The morning passed much as it usually did, as Vader attended meetings and managed the messes that those less competent than the clones had been had managed to make. Vader did have the good fortune, as his Master liked to say, of being of high enough rank that he didn't need to deal with the petty squabbles of the enlisted, but when he was feeling particularly uncharitable, Vader thought what Master didn't understand was that he still needed to deal with the petty squabbles of the officers. At least the squabbles of the enlisted were often about something other than power.
But it was more likely that his Master did understand. His Master's wisdom far outstripped his own, something Vader had known even before he had known the truth of his Master's power, and eventually Vader had realized that it was just a lesson he had yet to learn, the wisdom of feeding off the suffering and anger of others. Vader had always felt the emotions of others, back when he had still been his mother's son rather than the apprentice of his Master, and had always struggled to keep them from affecting him. But his Master had taught him to feed off the emotions of others, something the Jedi had never understood, and so he tried to let the petty squabbles and escalate to his own suffering, and to feed off it.
But Vader's suffering, the loss of his wife and unborn child, the loss of his mother, and the betrayal of a man he had wanted as a father, the loss of his ability to touch, had always far outstripped the suffering of the officers, and so it was difficult to do anything more than roll his eyes. He had not been born into priviledge the way the rest of them had, and so had once known a community without backstabbing, more like his enlisted troopers than his power-hungry officers.
The first lesson Anakin's mother had ever taught him, even before she had taught him how to be a person, was how to hide. Anakin had always been exceptionally good at it, being of the force, and had learned how to cloak himself in the force before he had ever learned the truth of his skills at the Jedi Temple. Vader could still do it now, although it was more difficult considering his size, and the amount of noise he made between his metal body and his glaring respirator. Sometimes he used the skill to sneak into the troopers mess, to listen to their conversations between each other, and bask in the comradery that his Master told him was beneath a Sith Lord of his prowess.
Vader wondered if it was truly beneath him, or if it was actually above him, above his place as a slave to one of the most powerful men in the galaxy. But that cruel of him, to compare his Master to a slaver. After all, there was no bomb keeping Vader at his side, only loyalty to the only one left in the galaxy for Vader to love.
He entered the troopers mess hall, and saw Black Squadron, his new personal flight squadron, eating together, their helmets at their side, as they bantered between each other. He silently made his way over to them, and started listening to their conversation, sybaritically basking in the muted bubble of fondness within the force.
Apparently, one of them went by the nickname "Mauler". He wondered if it was a reference to his Master's first failed apprentice, then thought better of it. After all, even if they had somehow heard of him, very little of the galaxy had been able to differentiate between the Sith and the Jedi back during the Clone Wars, and would thus be hesitant to align themselves with someone who had been an enemy even of the republic.
He watched them for some amount of minutes, feeling some forbidden and undeserved relief from the lack of suffering or pettiness among those troopers. Apparently, after lunch, they all had flight practice together, and were looking forward to it. Vader wondered, not for the first time, if he joined the drills, would they invite him to sit with them as they ate? Likely not, after all, he was their superior officer, but he still could not help but hope that maybe more time spent with them would build the friendship he had been denied since he had been locked into a suit that brought nightmares to everybody except his Master.
He turned away, and silently slipped out of the mess hall, making his way back to his office to continue making the text to speech program read his spemails to him. Vader was a good enough pilot without practice, his Master would surely realize that random drills were nothing more than self-indulgence.
A few hours later, Vader was summoned to Tarkin's office. Vader knew the summoning was nothing more than a petty slight, Tarkin's way of reminding him whom the Emperor favoured, but Vader knew that he was wrong. His Master had needed Tarkin, but he had chosen Vader specifically as his apprentice, a role nobody else in the empire could ever hope to achieve, a role that nobody could know of except for Vader, proof that his Master had trusted him over many people, including Tarkin. So it didn't matter that his rank in the military was one that meant anybody whom his Master chose could give him orders, that poeple like Tarkin felt that they could play petty games with him, for Vader was still special to his Master, the only person whom his Master had spent ten years befriending for the sole purpose of passing on his legacy.
So Vader took the way Tarkin treated him in stride, and made his way to Tarkin's office. It wasn't a long walk, only a few doors away, and Vader barely felt the strain on his metal legs, only some mild discomfort where metal met still-healing flesh.
Tarkin had a suspicious glimmer in his eye as he took in Vader, a glimmer that only increased in suspiciousness when he outlined his reasoning for summoning Vader. Apparently, he had hired a bounty hunter to investigate some criminals that were running a minor trafficking ring, and now that the bounty hunter had confirmed the existence of it, Vader needed to go and provide imperial presence for their arrests. Vader did not believe that a trafficking ring was a matter for the military, but agreed to assist.
It did not take long to arrive at the moon where Vader's rendezvous was to take place. He saw the ship before he saw the bounty hunter, a unique firespray-class fighter that felt somewhat familiar. The bounty hunter was mandalorian, with a voice that was familiar to Vader, familiar in a way that reminded him of the clone wars.
The bounty hunter introduced himself as Boba Fett, and the name struck a cord with Vader. The clone that had chosen to be Jango Fett's son, someone raised with love until his his only parent was murdered right in front of him a week after Anakin's mother had been murdered.
There was a fresh grief to Boba Fett, fresher than the grief of his father's death, and Vader wondered. He had not had friends since he had left the sandy planet that taught him to bond with others through the shared suffering of bending under a whip, since he had learned to bond with his fellow soldiers by drinking the same liquor after a battle, and maybe the bounty hunter had not learned until his father had left him when he was around the same age Anakin had been when he had been taken from his mother, and Vader wondered.
The bounty hunter was professional, curt, and together they made their way to the Firespray that Fett had named Slave-1, as the starfighter Vader had brought only sized one, and Vader did not intend to bring any prisoners with him. Vader watched from his seat behind the bounty hunter as he took off in his ship. The bounty hunter was an adept pilot, and soon they were underway to their target's base.
"So you're Darth Vader."
"And you are Boba Fett."
The bounty hunter was silent for a while, before continuing. "You're taller than I expected."
Vader did not know how to respond to that.
After a beat of awkward silence, Vader asked, "How tall did you expect me to be?"
There was another beat of akward silence, before the bounty hunter responded. "Same height as me really. I don't generally expect much of people."
"Understandable."
The bounty hunter was as competent as he was audacious, and the ensuing bloodbath was one of the first since the clone wars in which Vader had fought alongside someone whom he would deem as competent. Boba Fett fought with as much ferocity as Vader, and almost as much efficiency, even without the power of the force behind him, and Vader could sense a pleasing disdain towards those who treated people like property. He even appreciated the mid battle pun Vader had made, chuckling as he disintigrated a trafficker holding a knife to a young boy's neck.
When it was over, and the local imperial officials had been brought in to take any survivors into custody, and heal the victims in the ways that two men made of violence could not, Vader returned with Boba Fett to the ship, and once again sat strapped into the backseat while Fett began his pre-flight checks.
"You are competent, bounty hunter." Vader wanted to add to the compliment, but had not much idea of how to do so. "I have not worked with skill such as yours for years."
"You were a jedi?" asked Boba Fett, some surprise leaking into his voice alongside, curiously, hints of betrayal.
Vader wondered what Fett had assumed of his history. Clearly that he was some form of sith, but the only sith that had been public during the clone wars was Dooku, although what the public thought of General Grievous was elusive from his memory.
"It appears you misspoke earlier, when you implied you did not expect much from me."
It took Boba Fett a couple seconds to speak. "I did not. Your height just hadn't been on my list of priorities when I was anticipating you. But I will admit, I hadn't expected a jedi either. But you don't seem like the rest of them."
Vader didn't know how he felt about being told he was different from his apparent fellow jedi. "I am a jedi no longer."
He supposed it didn't matter. Sith were only to feel hate and the dark side anyways.
"Good."
Vader remembered that Boba Fett's father had been murdered by Jedi, in that same arena between the loss of his mother and his hand, and felt... flattered. "I was the one to kill your father's murderer."
Boba turned around and looked at him for what felt like a long time. The confused gratefulness coming off of him was so potent that for the first time since the fall of the jedi, the guilty regret he felt whenever he thought of that moment was not as strong.
Then the moment passed, and Boba Fett stood up, and moved out of the room. Vader sat there, doing nothing, wondering if the bounty hunter needed a moment alone, and deciding to give it to him.
Boba Fett came back, with a small piece of flimsi in his hand. "This is my comm number. Call me if you ever have a job needs doing."
Vader studied it, then slipped it into his glove so it would not get lost. "I guarantee the empire will be able to compensate you at worthwhile rates for a bounty hunter of your caliber."
A faint sense of pride lingered from the bounty hunter, and for once, the silence Vader sat in was not uncomfortable.
At the end of the day, before he took his armor off and prepared for another five hours of tortured sleep, Vader slipped the small piece of flimsi out of his glove, and programmed it into his professional comm, the one his Master did not care about as he was generally unconcerned with the minutiae of Vader's job, more concerned with him personally. Vader looked forward to working with the bounty hunter again. Boba Fett was not a friend, should be no more than someone useful for when the Empire's jurisdiction did not extend as far as the limits of a task, and yet Vader could not help thinking when Boba Fett were near, Vader did not feel quite so alone.
THE END